Daniel Bigelow

Daniel Bigelow (24 March 1824 – 15 September 1905) was a pioneer lawyer and politician in Olympia, Washington. Biography Daniel Richardson Bigelow was born March 24, 1824, in Belleville a hamlet in the township of Ellisburg, New York, a part of Jefferson County, New York. His parents were Jotham Bigelow (1784-1860) (son of Joel and Sarah (née Stowell) Bigelow) and Celinda Bullock ( d. 22 Apr 1824). He graduated from Union College in 1846 and attended Harvard Law School from 1847 to 1849. After graduation he began practice in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. News of the California Gold Rush sparked Bigelow's interest in relocating to the Pacific Coast. In 1851 Bigelow joined a wagon train headed west and crossed the Oregon Trail with his law books and desk, arriving in Portland in September. After determining Portland already had enough lawyers, he sailed up the coast in the schooner Exact to Puget Sound in November 1851 on the same voyage that carried the Denny Party. He continued south to Smithfield (later renamed Olympia), then part of the northern Oregon Territory. There he established a law office. At the time there were fewer than 200 American settlers. Bigelow was a gifted orator whose July 4, 1852 speech in Olympia contributed to the movement to create Washington Territory out of the part of the Oregon territory north of the Columbia River. Bigelow also served as one of the three commissioners who revised the laws of Oregon Territory at Salem during the summer of 1853. Daniel served as the first Treasurer of Thurston County, a member of the first legislature of Washington Territory in 1854, the first Superintendent of the Olympia School, and President of the Board of Trustees of Puget Sound Wesleyan Institute, the forerunner of the University of Puget Sound.